1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a low noise amplifier, and more particularly, to a low noise amplifier for carrier aggregation and non-carrier aggregation.
2. Description of the Related Art
Long Term Evolution (LTE) Advanced is a high-speed wireless communication standard for mobile phones and data terminals. To achieve high speed, transmission bandwidth is increased over that which can be achieved using a single carrier or channel. The method is commonly referred to as Carrier Aggregation (CA), where more than one carrier, or component carrier, are aggregated to increase the effective transmission bandwidth.
Carrier aggregation may be performed in one band (i.e., intra-band carrier aggregation) or in multiple bands (i.e., inter-band carrier aggregation).
In intra-band carrier aggregation, the component carriers may be contiguous (i.e., adjacent to each other) or non-contiguous. In inter-band carrier aggregation, the component carriers are non-contiguous.
An aggregated channel in which carrier aggregation is contiguous appears, from a Radio Frequency (RF) perspective, as a single channel, where only one transceiver is required to process the aggregated signal. However, when carrier aggregation is non-contiguous, the prior art requires more than one transceiver to process the aggregated signal.